Sunday, 28 December 2014

A few days before
the end of November 2014, I started behaving strangely. I took a bath
and when I'd finished drying off, I annoyed myself by stupidly
dropping the towel into the bath instead of onto the floor. Later, I
pissed on the closed toilet seat. I went to the shops, came home with
nothing and couldn't open the front door. I was using the wrong key.
I stared at my computer. I had forgotten how to type.

Two days later,
Anne and I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum with our friend,
Sebastian Balfour, to see “Disobedient Objects”. This was an
exhibition of radical items from street demonstrations across the
world.There were photos
of a recent protest in Rome: students confronting the riot squad with
homemade shields constructed to look like book covers so that the
police would be seen to be attacking literature: Boccaccio's The
Decameron, Dante's The Divine Comedy, George Orwell's
Homage to Catalonia. Hanging from the
ceiling was a battered pan lid that had helped bring down the
Argentine government in noisy rough-musik demonstrations. There was a
sling-shot made from the tongue of a shoe that a Palestinian had used
to defend himself against Israeli tanks.It was surreal
and my already-muddled head started to spin. I couldn't read the text
that accompanied the photos and displayed objects. With a splitting
headache, I had to sit down. Was I finally being driven mad by
radical politics? We went
to the café
and
Sebastianbought
us tea
and scones. After eating the scones, I wanted more tea and shocked
them by pouring it, not into my cup, but into the tiny jam jar. While
we were there, Sebastian's wife, Gráinne, rang him and when he told
her how I was behaving, she insisted I go to A&E immediately. On
my way to the Whittington Hospital in north London, I tried to use my
mobile phone to exit the Underground instead of swiping my travel
card. Even I realised something was seriously wrong.In triage they
were sufficiently alarmed to give me a CT scan. It wasn't political
subversion that was scrambling my brain; it was a chronic subdural
haematoma, a veinous bleed between the outside of the brain and the
skull. I was told that when a bed became available, I would be moved
to one of two specialist hospitals for neurosurgery: Royal London or
National Hospital for Neurology, Queen Square. Over the next
three days I became even more confused. Alarmed at my deterioration,
Anne kept asking the Whittington when I was to be transferred, but
Gráinne managed to discover the names and numbers of the Bed
Managers at both hospitals and pestered them to take me as soon as
possible.On December 3 I
was admitted to Queen Square and told I would be having an operation
the next morning to drain two massive blood lakes on the left side of
my brain. This was cancelled four times because of emergency cases.
Anne refused to leave my bedside, afraid that if she did, I would be
taken to theatre and she wouldn't be able to accompany me. Afraid
that it it might be the last time she saw me. She spent the whole day
slumped over my bed rail. I was operated on
late that evening. When I woke up back in the ward, I was speaking,
functioning normally again, but with the additional fashion accessory
of a square, flat plastic bag. It was attached by tubing to one of
the holes drilled into my head to drain blood and post-op saline
solution. I asked Anne to bring me my computer the next day so that I
could let my friends and family know I was myself again. But recovery is
not always straight forward. Twenty-four hours after the operation, I
had an unexpected relapse. I was unable to remember my name or date
of birth. I dreaded the nurses who came constantly to take my blood
pressure. Their first question was always, 'Where are you?' I would
try and work out my answer as I saw them approaching. I was now so
confused I had no idea how to clean my teeth or use my mobile. When I
went to the toilet, I couldn't remember if it was wipe, shit, stand
or sit, wipe, shit. It was all very scary. I could only say
'Yes' or 'No' to questions. Words on a page no longer made sense. I
had lost the ability to speak in sentences or read. I was assigned a
speech therapist who came to my bedside with word exercises. At
first, I was unable to read single-syllable words like 'book' and
'cold'. 'Peanut butter' was an impossibility. I was given a sheet
with pictures and the words underneath so patients who'd lost the
ability to speak could point at an image to indicate to staff what
they needed to communicate. On the first row in the first box was a
figure holding his head. The text underneath said, 'I'm in pain.' I
struggled to decipher 'pain'. Stumbling over the letters, I finally
managed to pronounce “pain” phonetically. When the therapist
asked me to read the next box with a picture of four figures holding
hands that said 'I want my family', I repeated 'pain'.My Brazilian
guitar teacher, Deicola Neves, brought his guitar and played bossa
nova to the ward. He left it with me but, when I tried to play, I
couldn't remember a single chord.Anne knew more
about my condition than I did. When she signed the consent form just
before the operation, they told her that the procedure carried
risks—no improvement, seizures, infection, left in a vegetative
state and even death. She told me later that, while I was in the
operating theatre, she went to the hospital chapel and lit four
candles for me: one from her: two from my sons and one from my
grandson. She then sat in the ward, staring at the empty space where
my bed had been. She says she hoped for the best, but was preparing
herself for the worst.I can't recall
being frightened from the moment I arrived at the Whittington to the
moment I left Queen Square nearly three weeks later. I wasn't even
fearful when they took me to the operating theatre. I remember
thinking, They're just taking me for a check-up downstairs. Anne has
a different opinion and tells me that, as they wheeled me away, I
looked like I had the eyes of a wild horse.At time of death
it is said that the body releases chemicals that ease the mind from
panic and fear. Perhaps this also happens when your skull is about to
be opened. My consultant told me that patients facing brain surgery
somehow manage to hold themselves together to be able to get through
it. She added that the patients who worry least take longer to
recover. Her reason being that the mind which fights off fear at the
most critical of moments delays the trauma, but cannot avoid it
altogether.

Four
days after the operation and with no improvement, my consultant stood
at the foot of my bed. She was unhappy with my progress because my
ability to speak and read had deteriorated so rapidly. I was told I
might have to have a second operation, and that this would involve
substantial risk. Anne asked what was involved. She explained that a
window of bone would have to be cut out of my skull to enable access
for the brain to be scraped so as to remove old, dried blood in the
hope that my ability to read and speak would be restored. There was,
she said, no guarantee of success. Anne asked for the time frame
before a decision was made. The consultant answered 'two days'.

As
soon as the consultant left my bedside I indicated to Anne to hand me
the sheet of images and words the speech therapist had given me that
morning I had been able to read one word, 'pain'. Miraculously I
slowly read out to Anne all the captions under the pictures. I have
no explanation for this except that a possible, more dangerous and
invasive op unlocked something in my mind. Without any other
intervention, I began to speak and read.

Within
two hours, I was talking reasonably and four days later I was home.

Lying in that bed
reminded me of my father. I felt I was starting to talk like him,
dribble my food the same way he did when he was bedridden and even
have similar illogical conversations. In my ward of six
patients there was a greengrocer, a judge, a follower of Hari
Krishna, a white Zimbabwean and an employee of Coca-Cola. I became
friends with all of them except the judge. The greengrocer lived by
the principle of the Sufi, Abu Sa'id, who said, 'Whatever you have in
your hand—give it. Whatever is to be your fate—face it.' He had
faced two operations to remove a tumour on his pituitary gland. Four
days after his discharge, he came from his home in Wembley to visit
the ward and to give each of us a sack of tangerines. The Hari Krishna
kept offering me his vegan food. We agreed that, in the New Year, we
would walk together on Hampstead Heath.The white African
was a puzzle. In his 70s, he had served in the Rhodesian army and had
then been a welder and business man. He was nostalgic for lost
'Empire'. But he spoke a number of African languages, was adored by
the nurses—many of them African—and was always sympathetically
curious about their lives. He shared with me my dislike of the judge.The Coca-Cola man
was the only one in the ward with no bandages. When Anne asked him
why, he said he'd had a tumour behind his eye successfully removed
through his nose. He told her this when they first talked together as
he gave her a Costa coffee he had bought for her after seeing her
looking distressed by my bedside.I warmed to him
when he told me that he travelled the world for the company, but
always refused to go to Israel. Then added that, although he drank
'American champagne', he knew it was a poison.The judge treated
the nurses as if they were on trial. Every day we were given a long
menu (the food was excellent there) and asked to choose our lunch and
dinner. Once, when they brought the judge pasta, he complained he'd
asked for spaghetti. They brought him the menu to show him that
spaghetti was not on offer. 'Well, I ordered it,' he said. I wanted
to tell him a neurological hospital is not the Ritz. His wife rang
one day. A nurse relayed the message to tell him she'd called. The
nurse then asked him to tell his wife not to be so miserable. 'Life
is short,' she said. In a neighbouring
ward there was Bill, an old soldier, officer class, who kept trying
to escape. He would shuffle into our ward and be obnoxious to the
nurses who had to follow him around to prevent him from falling or
straying too far. He would physically and verbally abuse them, not
caring that he was often taking several of them away from their
duties. Just after my op, when I was able to speak, he passed my bed
with three black nurses and muttered that he was about to be
cannibalised. I got out of bed, prepared to hit him. One of the
nurses warned me off and told me they weren't allowed to touch him so
I said, 'Get the fuck out of here and stop insulting the staff.' The greengrocer
told me that Bill was suffering after his operation. Maybe, but he
had clearly been an unpleasant man pre-op. And scarce NHS resources
were being used to guard him.The nurses and
cleaners came from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Uganda, India, the Philippines,
Poland, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, England, Columbia, Spain,
Portugal. The surgeons were from Italy, China, Ireland, the
Philippines and north London. The surgeon who saved my life was from
Nigeria. All of them were incredibly skilled, friendly and
supportive. I hope Nigel Farage doesn't spend any time in hospital.I
got flowers, fruit, cards and daily phone calls from my son in
Barcelona. Lapsed Catholics lit candles, an Iraqi atheist friend who
was in Tunisia made a Friday visit to the mosque to pray for me and
400 US Reiki practitioners practised intuitive healing with me in
mind.When
well enough to leave the ward, Anne took me to the chapel where she'd
spend an hour each day between the morning and afternoon visiting
hours. On entering I saw a notice saying that 'This chapel is for all
faiths'. It should be changed to '...all faiths and none'.
On
a table near a bank of candles, there is a Visitors' Book. One
inscription in that book of hope and despair read, 'Thanks to all
gods and goddesses and the NHS.' Another was, 'Mum was always heading
for heaven. But please God, not yet.' I wrote my own message. In
place of the gratitudes to God, Jesus and Allah, mine says, 'Let us
thank the NHS'. No idea where I am heading but, wherever it is, the health service have delayed my departure.

Tuesday, 13 May 2014

These are the opening paragraphs of my chapter fromLeft Field on the work of the
Pavarotti Music Centre.

The Bible says, ‘In the beginning was the word’. Wrong. First
there was the rhythm. From the time of the Big Bang, it is the beat
that gives the cosmos its pulse. All else may be chaos, but it is
there, in mathematical time, something primordial. In one sense,
however, the Bible was right. Man’s first attempt to communicate
involved rhythm, movement and dance which represented the first
language, the first word.

At the time of what Engels called ‘primitive communism’, when
homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers, humans signalled to each other by
beating stick on stick, stone on stone. The first vocal syllables
were whistles and calls based on rhythmic patterns which allowed
human communication to take place.

Rhythm was there, at the start of everything. It was there at the
start of our species and at the start of our individual lives.
Whether or not we evolved from the sea, we all emerged from the
waters of our mothers and water is a perfect transmitter of sound.
Try placing a waterproof watch at one end of a swimming pool. Get
there early in the morning, when no one else is around, and ask a
friend to swim underwater to the far end of the pool and ask them
what they can hear.

Both the heart of the foetus and that of the mother beat to a time
cycle of three/four: dash dash, dum dum, dum dum, dum dum. Mother and
baby are in syncopated rhythm. They have individual rhythms which
meet to form a third. Sounds exterior to the womb may also be heard
and absorbed. Many pregnant women will tell you that they are aware
their babies react to external sounds.

So music and rhythm, or rhythm
and music to be chronologically correct, are central to our lives. It
is a physical and emotional link, both to something in us and beyond
us, linking us to the music of the spheres. Music can move us to extremes of joy or sadness, elation or
depression. Perhaps it is a piece we associate with some event in our
life: when we first kissed, when we went to our first teenage party,
when we first made love. This musical association is strong in all of
us. Perhaps it is with Albinoni’s “Adagio”, Mozart’s
“Clarinet Concerto”, Ali Farka Toure, blues, a song sung by Ella
Fitzgerald or John Lee Hooker, an Indian raga, hip hop or drum and
bass. In all of types of music, we can be emotionally, and even
physically, moved.

If you project sound waves at piles of sand, iron filings, water
or mercury, you can create varied patterns, from spirals to grids.
Given the sound conductivity of water and its high level in the human
body, it is hardly surprising that our cells react to sound
vibrations, even those at the far end of the spectrum which we are
unable to hear. With this knowledge, holistic healers place vibrating
forks close to the energy field of the human body and hospitals use
high-pitched sound to shatter kidney and gall stones. Conversely, the
negative side of the use of sound are experiments undertaken by the
US military and other governments, utilizing sound waves as a weapon
of war. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have shown us that music itself can
be a weapon.

It has been argued that the vibrational energies of different
notes affect different areas of the body. For instance, C major
affects the bones, lower back, legs and feet. D major transmits
energy waves to the kidneys and bladder, lymphatic and reproductive
systems and skin and A major is related to pain and pain control.

Perhaps it is for this reason that in ancient Egypt, the
hieroglyph for music was also that for well-being and joy. But what
about music in negative, non-joyful situations, in war? When the
lights go out, leaving hunger and the threat of death, you will still
find music.

In 1993 and 1994, I was in cellars in Sarajevo and Mostar. Shells
were exploding, the snipers were at work, but people, particularly
young people, gathered together and, if they could not listen to
music, as there was often no power, they played it. The louder the
shelling, the louder their music. It was an expression of defiance, a
testament to the survival of the one thing that kept them human in an
inhuman situation—the primordial language of rhythm and music which
connected them to their essence.

A young soldier in Mostar visited me after his time on the front
line, a Kalashnikov on one shoulder and a guitar on the other. He
tapped the guitar and told me, ‘A much better weapon’. . . . . .

Sunday, 27 April 2014

Here
is another excerpt from my forthcoming book, Left Field- Michael Foot's visit to
Mostar.

In
the months leading up to the opening of the Pavarotti Music Centre in
December 1997, we had numerous visits from local, and not so local,
politicians. I remember stumbling across ex-Tory minister, Michael -
Something of the Night - Howard in the reception area. He was being
shown the nearly-completed building by an official from the EU
Administration offices. I asked him what he was doing in Bosnia
Hercegovina. ‘I’m
on a fact-finding mission,’ he said. ‘Who
are you meeting to do that? I asked. ‘Politicians,’ he said. I
answered, ‘Mr Howard, you should know better than anyone. You don’t
go to them for facts.’ He did laugh.

In
July I had watched Steve Biko’s ex-driver, the percussionist,
Eugene Skeef, run workshops in the town. He had been invited to
Mostar by Nigel Osborne and had recently worked with Edmund Mhlongo
in Kwa Mashu on the Ngoma cultural education project. Remembering
Mandela’s words to me that our music centre was a project needed in
Africa, I realised that Eugene was a key to internationalising the
PMC. I had also heard about the success of his djembe
classes with children in the UK.

His
first workshops were so successful I offered him the job of director
of music development at the centre. He agreed to start work when the
building opened. A few days before Eugene returned to London, we
went to Dubrovnik. There we met two German doctors and they were
interested to hear about our work in Mostar. Eugene had their eyes
popping with his words about the importance of music and rhythm in
our lives. One of the doctors said he spoke like a poet. He laughed
and rewarded them with, “listen for the cadence of the
sun in its journey that never ends. When night falls and the song
fades, follow the rhythm of the moon when your voice disappears like
a bird.” Those words got us a
bed for the night. When we told them we were going to spend the night
sleeping on the beach, they invited us to stay at their hotel, Villa
Dubrovnik. Much to our surprise, there, at the bar was a politician I
was delighted to meet; Michael Foot and his wife, Jill Craigie. They
told us they stayed there every summer.

Sitting
on the hotel balcony overlooking the old city walls, we discussed the
war and the film he and Jill had made about it, Two Hours
From London. I told them what a
good documentary it was, but that it was a bit light on the
Bosnian-Croatian war and that they should visit Mostar. Michael
agreed to come with us the next day. Jill opted out because she
didn’t like travelling along the serpentine roads.

Eugene
and I showed Michael round Mostar’s old town. He was already eighty
four and walked very slowly. It was impossible to use a car in
Mostar’s narrow streets, but he was determined to see as much as he
could. We ended our walk at the Centre where he sat down at last in
the uncompleted courtyard. 'This is very impressive, David. I am sure
you will be doing wonderful work in this building.'

That
afternoon I drove him back to Dubrovnik and we spent the three hour
drive discussing politics and poetry. I told him I’d enjoyed Paul
Foot's Red Shelley,
his nephew's book about the poet. Michael laughed and broke into,
'Rise like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew, That in sleep have fallen on
you, Ye are many, they are few.'

After
a pause he added, ‘But you know, Paul is wrong. Byron was the
greater poet and greater revolutionary. Have you read "Darkness"?’

‘No,
I haven’t.’

‘Stuck
on Shelley, are you?' Another pause and then he recited, 'They
slept on the abyss without a surge-- The waves were dead; the tides
were in their grave, The moon their mistress had expir'd before; The
winds were withered in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd;
Darkness had no need, Of aid from them--She was the
Universe.' Michael smiled
at me. ‘Byron goes further than Shelley. You must read him.’

When
I got back to Mostar, Eugene and I went to a cafe close to the
suspension bridge which had replaced the destroyed stone bridge. We
watched in horror as a young man climbed over the rope hand-rail and
hurled himself the twenty metres backwards into the Neretva. We
rushed down to the river and Eugene and I managed to grab hold of his
arms. We thought he should go to hospital, but he said he was okay
and got up to walk away. I persuaded him to come to my flat which was
close to the bridge.

He
was soaking wet and Eugene gave him one of his T-shirts and a pair
of his trousers. Over coffee he told us he'd come from Kiseljak in
central Bosnia. He had never recovered from the loss of his mother,
father and two sisters in the war. He had an aunt who had been living
in Mostar and had come to look for her. She, too, had been killed. In
despair, he had spent the last of his money on drink and then had
decided to end his life. He had been disappointed to find the
suspension bridge was four metres lower than the old bridge which had
been twenty-four metres high at its apex. But he still thought he
would die if he fell backwards into the water. While he was talking
Eugene played soothing rhythms on his djembe.
When he left us we felt guilty we hadn’t been more persistent in
insisting he go to the hospital.

Two
months later a package arrived at my London address. It was a
collection of Byron’s poems with a dedication on the inside cover,
“Byronic greetings from Michael Foot, with many thanks
for a most instructive visit to Mostar, Sept 1997. Read especially
Don Juan, right through non-stop, as I did again. See also Darkness.
It has reflections of Mostar.”

I
don’t remember giving him my address so I assume he must have
contacted the War Child office. All these years later Michael’s
‘Byron’ is on my shelf and I dip into it a lot. I always
start by reading the dedication. I don’t know what happened to the
man who fell from the bridge and what he did with his darkness.

Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Time for another excerpt from my forthcoming book, Left Field. Luciano Pavarotti arrives to open the music centre in Mostar.

Weeks earlier, children had decorated the art room with their hand prints. Hearing about this gave me the idea to have Pavarotti and the other celebrities place theirs under the tablet we had had made commemorating the opening. I'd arranged for two trays of green paint to be prepared for this. When Pavarotti’s head of security saw the children standing at the side with the trays, he told me that the last time this had happened was in an Italian school and the paint had ended up on Pavarotti’s clothes.

I ordered the paint ceremony to be cancelled but, to my horror, the two children were already stepping through the crowd just as Pavarotti, Bono and Brian Eno were unveiling the memorial. Pavarotti covered his hands with poster paint, followed by Bono and the others. Luckily no one’s clothes were splashed.

We had to get Pavarotti upstairs, through the crowd, for the press conference. I pushed my way through them to arrange for the lift to take him up. It was full. Its occupants included the Swiss Ambassador and a German army general. Unceremoniously, I ordered them out to let the Maestro enter.

Before the conference I'd made sure that there were spaces on the dais reserved for Pavarotti, Bono and a child. As I entered the hall, I saw there were not enough chairs. Tom Stoppard saw my face and vacated his and Bono picked up the child and sat him on his knee. I was now being told that the party had to leave for the Chinooks in five minutes. There was only time for Pavarotti to say, “My message is peace. You saw the horror of war—you see today the peace. The future now is in the hands of the children who will soon be grown up. Try to live in peace. That is the reason why we are here today.”

It was then a dash back to the lift, with just enough time to give Pavarotti and Bono a quick visit to the studio in the basement. ‘Ciao,’ Luciano called out as he was pushed into the street by an increasingly nervous military escort. He was gone.

Some months later, I asked Pavarotti if he would submit his memories of the day to us and he wrote this:

“It is no exaggeration to say that visiting Mostar that day was trulyone of the most beautiful moments of my life. For two years, we hadbeen raising funds through concerts and albums to build the MusicCentre and, to eventually see its completion and to witness some of thebeautiful and talented children of Mostar performing for us was simply a joy. The children that day were so verypatient. We were delayed on our journey by something beyond our control,the weather! Those children are an example to us all and a tribute to Mostar. If music is central to a person’s life, it can be something very special and life-affirming. The Music Centre wasbuilt for the children - I can only hope that making music helps in thehealing process and that it will bring joy to the children of Mostar formany, many years to come."You can view a video of Pavarotti's arrival at the centre here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FulXMXQFqrY&feature=youtu.be

Friday, 17 January 2014

Best known for his role as Trigger in Only Fools and Horses, Roger Lloyd-Pack was such a distinguished actor he was never out of work with roles on stage and film as well as TV. From Kafka in Alan Bennet's Kafka's Dick to Osip in Chekhov's Wild Honey to Barty Crouch in Harry Potter. I first met Roger twenty years ago when he supported the work of War Child. In more recent years, he was an active supporter of the anti-war movement and when I helped organise fundraising events at the Stop the War Coalition, Roger said 'Yes' to all requests for help that came his way. When I called him, his only question was 'What would you like me to do?' For such a busy actor, this always amazed me. The last time I met him was when he used his acting talent to perform in The Trainer at the Hackney Empire, a play Anne Aylor and I wrote to raise money for the Gaza Music School which was destroyed in the Israeli attacks in 2009. Roger had been a supporter of the Labour Party, but last year was one of the signatories to a letter in the Guardian supporting Ken Loach and the formation of a new party of the Left—Left Unity. He leaves his mark on acting and political activism, but also in the teaching of philosophy. This clip from Only Fools and Horses is Trigger's attempt to explain 'The Ship of Theseus' paradox and is used in philosophy classes at universities. Now renamed 'Trigger's Broom' paradox.

He died on 15 January 2014, aged 69, from pancreatic cancer. Roger is a sad loss for us all.